We decided to make do with the hotel. This was a research trip, not a vacation. The important thing was to get to Herculaneum to see the Villa dei Papiri, where the charred scrolls had been found. I’d already begun to formulate a story in which a scroll is lost in the villa in the days before Vesuvius erupted. A cast of ancient characters would search for it in the villa, while in the present, my archaeologists and papyrus scanners also wander the villa’s ruins. I saw it as a kind of English manor house mystery, with better food.
The morning we had planned to go to Herculaneum, a taxi strike was declared. We managed to get there, however, using a funicular and bus and train. At last—the Villa dei Papiri! On the tour were just my husband, myself, an Italian archaeologist, and our guide: an old man with the keys to the site and who didn’t speak a word of English. That was all right, I thought, as we descended into a pit carved out of tufa and crossed a weed-choked underground stream alive with croaking frogs reminiscent of the Styx; I was really doing research now! I was getting the inside dope.
With my limited Italian and a little help from the archaeologist, I understood about one-tenth of what the old man said, but the little I did understand was still amazing. Our elderly guide showed us the tunnels where eighteenth-century excavators had retrieved the scrolls, and then we climbed up to the third level. We walked through rooms with dust-covered mosaic floors and traces of paint clinging to fragments of walls, and out onto a peristyle that would have once faced the sea, but which now faced a wall of tufa that some Americans had carved strange shapes into. (No wonder they don’t like us.) Then we moved on to the baths.
I turned back as we left the villa and suddenly realized that that was it. The Villa dei Papiri hadn’t been fully excavated. There were only these few rooms and a private bath a few yards away.
After traveling thousands of miles in a cramped economy seat, suffering intestinal discomforts, sacrificing the comforts of home and the company of my child and my pets, having spent too much money to stay in a room that would have been a penance to Renaissance women only to find, as T. S. Eliot puts it, “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all” I couldn’t possibly have my narrator come and stay in this city where it was too hot and there weren’t taxis and besides, the villa wasn’t excavated enough to support the shenanigans of my characters. An entire trip pursuing my fictional muse had been a terrible mistake.
Later that day, however, I wandered into a quiet room in Herculaneum, a room that had been dug from solidified lava but was now open to the sunlight—like the glimmer of an idea rescued from the dark. My eyes filled with tears. I’d come across the household shrine. For a moment, I felt the presence of the men and women who had knelt to pray at this spot every day of their lives. I experienced the sadness of a place where so many people had died unexpectedly and painfully. At the shrine, I felt the first seeds of inspiration.
More such moments followed in the coming days. The shadow of painted wings, barely visible, on a red wall in another room in Herculaneum; the strangely enigmatic figures performing rites that still have no explanation at the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii; the echoing Cave of the Sibyl at Cumae; the empty, sun-filled rooms of the Villa Jovis on Capri.
It was on the way from Capri to Sorrento that I realized what I had to do. I didn’t have to write about the real Villa dei Papiri; I could create my own ancient Herculanean villa. Even better, I could give my Papyrus Project a rich benefactor who’d built a replica of the villa (like the Getty Museum) somewhere nearby—like Sorrento, maybe, or the Isle of Capri.
That’s where my heroine and the rest of the crew would stay while they deciphered a rediscovered scroll, one lost in the days just before the volcano erupted. As I watched the swallows careening over the bay, I felt my imagination set free and take flight. I had caught up with my muse once again.
A CONVERSATION WITH CAROL GOODMAN
Carol Goodman and her husband, Lee Slonimsky, chat about writing, Italy, and good tomatoes.
Lee Slonimsky: Like your last book, The Sonnet Lover, The Night Villa is set in Italy, but this time in the Bay of Naples. What drew you back to an Italian setting, and why a different part of the country?
Carol Goodman: Having made numerous trips to Italy while researching The Sonnet Lover, one visit I found particularly memorable was to the Bay of Naples. This breathtakingly beautiful area has fascinated me since I first visited Pompeii and Herculaneum as a classics student in college. I think any writer strolling the streets of Sorrento would find inspiration there.
LS: Certainly many have. Sorrento’s town square is even dominated by the statue of a native poet, Torquato Tasso. So was Italy your main inspiration for the novel, or did something else lead you to this story?
CG: More than most, this book had a very precise moment of origin. My friend Ross Scaife is a professor of classics at the University of Kentucky, and he told me of a grant he’d been given to use multispectral imaging to study the charred manuscripts found at Herculaneum’s Villa dei Papiri. I thought this was just about the coolest thing I’d ever heard of and immediately wanted to base a book’s plot around a similar exploration. Ross was generous with suggestions and explanations, and he directed me toward a fine book by David Sider, The Library of the Villa dei Papiri. As I constructed my story, though, I realized I had to fictionalize the villa as well as give my characters someplace to relax. I also took many liberties with the scientific process of scanning ancient manuscripts, for which I apologize to Ross and his colleagues.
LS: One of the most remembered and tragic events in history, the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79 is an interesting choice of subject matter for a novelist like yourself who often works with themes of memory and loss. Has Pompeii long been a subject of fascination for you?
CG: The first time I saw Pompeii and Herculaneum, I was twenty years old. Spending a semester at the Inter-Collegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome, I visited a lot of ancient sites. Still, nothing prepared me for walking down an actual street in Pompeii or entering an authentic house in Herculaneum.
LS: Were Iusta and Phineas real people?
CG: Phineas is fictional; Iusta is based on a real person. I first read about her in Joseph Jay Deiss’s book Herculaneum: Italy’s Buried Treasure. Her story is much as I describe it in chapter five of The Night Villa, with a few details changed about the lawsuit. All that is known about Iusta comes from eighteen wax tablets. We don’t know whether she was even in Herculaneum when Mount Vesuvius erupted. Everything Sophie finds out about Iusta from Phineas is, of course, fictional.
LS: All your novels have been filled with classical references of one sort or another, but The Night Villa is the first to contain a literal, if fictitious, ancient manuscript, a real character and voice from the ancient world. What was writing in that voice like for you?
CG: I was worried I wouldn’t be able to capture Phineas’s voice or tell Iusta’s story. For Phineas, I reread a number of classical authors: Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius, Aulus Gellius, and Livy. When writing those sections, I tried to think about how it would sound in Latin, so while composing in English, I used words with Latin counterparts.
As for Iusta, I was immediately drawn to her story, but it wasn’t until the end of the book that I felt I heard her voice. I could have written much more about her, but at least she has the final word.
LS: Was there anything else that inspired you in the course of writing the book?
CG: Your book of sonnets about the life of Pythagoras [Pythagoras in Love] suggested to me the nature of the modern cult in The Night Villa. I had no idea how important and profound a historical figure Pythagoras was—even more than a mathematician or philosopher.
LS: The Night Villa includes two of my poems, one written in this plot-oriented manner, and the other a recent poem you liked and thought would fit your plot. That’s the Wilhelmina F. Jashemski poem, which had actually been inspired by reading The Night Villa.
CG: It wasn’t until the second
draft that I realized it would work perfectly as the poem Sophie wrote for Elgin. You know, you’ve adopted a persona of Pythagoras for your poems and are so adept at writing from the personae I’ve “assigned” you over the years [Zalman Bronsky in The Ghost Orchid, Ginevra de Laura in The Sonnet Lover], I sometimes wonder if you ever write from your own point of view. I know I sometimes give my fictional characters pieces of myself. For instance, I give Sophie my old Austin bungalow and, of course, my love of classical authors.
LS: Were there any particular books you read during your research for The Night Villa?
CG: I read a lot of nonfiction books for research. For those interested, the most useful were Herculaneum: Italy’s Buried Treasure by Joseph Jay Deiss, The Library of the Villa Dei Papiri at Herculaneum by David Sider, The Cults of Campania by Roy Merle Peterson, The Cults of the Roman Empire by Robert Turcan, Romans on the Bay of Naples by John D’Arms, Earthly Paradises: Ancient Gardens in History and Archaeology by Maureen Carroll, and Vesuvius A.D. 79 by Ernesto De Carolis and Giovanni Patricelli. For the history and atmosphere of Capri, I read The Story of San Michele by Axel Munthe, Siren Land by Norman Douglas, Capri and No Longer Capri by Raffaele La Capria, and Greene on Capri by Shirley Hazzard. It was fun but also hard work. The next book is going to be set in New England.
LS: No more trips to Italy?
CG: Not for a little while, but I was thinking we could go hiking in New Hampshire.
LS: Sounds good to me.
READER’S GROUP QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. The Night Villa continues the intersection of past and present narratives common in Carol Goodman’s other novels, but with a much-greater expanse of time between the two threads. Does this make for a more dramatic narrative? What other effects does the gulf of time separating the two stories have?
2. Part of the plot is tied to a historical event: the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. What kind of shadow does this famous event cast over the novel?
3. How sympathetic a character did you find Agnes? Does her background fully explain her behavior?
4. Do you see Phineas as fundamentally decent, a pompous ass, or somewhere in between?
5. Cults play a significant role in this novel, past and present. How do you define a cult? Have you ever known a cult member? Why do you think people join them?
6. Who is your favorite character in The Night Villa? Least favorite?
7. The multispectral imaging technology used in The Night Villa has the potential to revolutionize the study of ancient manuscripts. What exotic or ancient world would you like to know more about?
8. Do you think Sophie was right to complain bitterly about conditions at the Hotel Convento? Or was she acting like a “spoiled American”?
9. What genre of writing do you think The Night Villa falls into?
10. Like previous Carol Goodman novels, The Night Villa brings its geographic setting vividly alive. Is there a place you have visited that has artistically inspired you?
11. Sophie is horrified in The Night Villa by the loss of her boyfriend, Ely, to a cult. Have you had a similar experience of distance developing in a relationship—perhaps if not because of a cult, then because of an addiction or an all-consuming hobby? If so, how did you handle it?
12. One characteristic of literary fiction is that characters are not static and may undergo genuine changes during the course of a narrative. What character or characters undergo transformations in The Night Villa?
13. Certainly Sophie’s impression of Elgin changes during the novel. Did yours? If so, do you think Elgin changed, or was it simply that you got more information about him?
14. When ex-lovers reencounter each other after years have passed, the results can range from animosity to the flame being resparked. Have you ever had such an encounter? What happened?
15. How do the issues in Iusta’s life relate to problems faced by contemporary women? Are they drastically different?
CAROL GOODMAN is the author of The Lake of Dead Languages, The Seduction of Water, The Drowning Tree, The Ghost Orchid, and The Sonnet Lover. The Seduction of Water won the 2003 Hammett Prize, and her other novels have been nominated for the Dublin/IMPAC Award and the Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her fiction has been translated into eight languages. She teaches writing at the New School University in New York City.
BY CAROL GOODMAN
The Night Villa
The Sonnet Lover
The Ghost Orchid
The Drowning Tree
The Seduction of Water
The Lake of Dead Languages
The Night Villa is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Original
Copyright © 2008 by Carol Goodman
Reading group guide copyright © 2008 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
RANDOM HOUSE READER’S CIRCLE and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Goodman, Carol.
The night villa: a novel / Carol Goodman.
p. cm.
1. College teachers—Fiction. 2. Women classicists—Fiction. 3. Excavations (Archaeology)—Fiction. 4. Cults—Fiction. 5. Pythagoras—Fiction. 6. Herculaneum (Extinct city)—Fiction. 7. Italy—Fiction I. Title.
PS3607.O566N54 2008
813'.6—dc22 2008008519
www.randomhousereaderscircle.com
eISBN: 978-0-345-50938-3
v3.0
Carol Goodman, The Night Villa
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